


respite

by Siria



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanks to sheafrotherdon for betaing. For those of <a href="http://siria.dreamwidth.org/390176.html">my prompters</a> who wanted some Steve/Danny dealing with the return of Steve's mom</p>
            </blockquote>





	respite

When Danny was seventeen and angry, he’d been a smoker—the rich burn of the tobacco against the back of his throat was a steadying pleasure, his yellow-stained fingers and chewed nails always a sign that he could never quite make himself steady enough. Now Danny was thirty-five and angry, and craving a cigarette in a way he hadn’t since even before he’d met Rach. A cigarette would calm him down after today’s shit show, a cigarette would give his hands something to do—something better than what he really wanted to do, which was throttle Wo Fat when he found the son of a bitch, which was flip the bird at Doris McGarrett, which was to punch the wall beside him until his knuckles were bloodied and speckled with drywall.

Danny was a cop. He'd had to make a lot of shitty phone calls in his time, stand on a lot of doorsteps and tell weeping parents that there'd been a traffic accident and that he was so, so very sorry. It was never easy—Danny never wanted it to become easy—but over time he'd figured out a way to approach it, a way to deal with things that didn't involve him sitting in a cop bar and marinating his liver in a bottle of whiskey. There was no rulebook for this, though: sitting and watching through the glass as his partner took a steadying breath and picked up the phone. Steve wasn't calling his sister to say that someone was hurt or dead; his shoulders were hunched and his eyes were closed because he was saying _I'm sorry, Mare, but it's Mom. Mom's alive_. 

In one of the conference rooms down the hall, Kono and Chin were sitting with the Governor and Doris McGarrett and a whole flock of CIA agents: grim-faced men and women in sober suits talking about "imminent threat to the city" and "in the interests of national security." By rights, Danny should have been there with them. He wasn't. Instead, he watched Steve tell his baby sister that she had to exchange one kind of heartbreak for another, and Danny had to rub the heel of his palm against his aching chest at the look on Steve's face. Danny had the feeling he hadn't looked that different when he'd sat Gracie down to tell her that Uncle Matt was gone and that she wasn't going to see him again for a long, long time. There were dark circles under Steve's eyes—Danny would bet good money that Steve hadn't slept since his plane had touched down in Honolulu—and his mouth had that pinched, angry look it always got when someone was hurting Steve's family and he didn't know how to stop it. 

It was always worst when the person hurting your family was family, too. 

Danny waited until Steve had put down the phone and then opened the door to Steve's office. "Not now, Danny," Steve said without looking up, but Steve never could lie worth shit, so Danny took the high road and ignored him—though if Danny was going to be honest with himself, less because he wanted to be in the moral majority, here, and more because he didn’t relish the thought of the hospital bill he’d get if he cracked a knuckle off the door frame. He marched forward until he was right in front of Steve and then stood there, hands in his pockets and waited. 

"Don't," Steve said. This close to him, Danny could see that Steve's stubble was on the verge of becoming a full on beard, and that the collar of his black t-shirt was damp with sweat. He looked like he'd just come to a stop after running a marathon, and judging from the tiny tremors in his hands, maybe Steve felt that way too. "Danny, don't, just don't—"

There were a whole lot of things Danny could have said right then. He could have yelled at Steve for taking off again. He could have promised that the whole team was with him, that he and Kono and Chin were going to do everything they could to help recapture Wo Fat and make sure Steve's mom was safe. He could have listed off everything he thought about Doris McGarrett, named out every nerve-close, bone-deep way that she'd pissed Danny the fuck off. He didn't say anything. Somewhere over the past couple of years, he'd figured out that words weren't always what was needed. He waited until Steve finally raised his head and opened his eyes and then, telegraphing his movements slowly and carefully, Danny leaned in and hugged him. 

For a long moment, Steve stood stiff and unyielding, until Danny ran his hand in one big arc up and down Steve's back. Then it was like standing too close to K īlauea, feeling something seismic happening deep below the surface—Steve shook once, hard, and then he was hugging Danny back, fiercely. It was almost uncomfortably tight, a hug that made his ribs creak and his neck ache, but Steve's stubble was scraping against his, his t-shirt sweat-damp and warm beneath Danny's palms, and for the first time in two days, the line of Steve's back didn't feel rigid enough to snap. 

"Worth it," Danny murmured. Steve flinched, but Danny didn't let him go. He swatted Steve gently upside the head and said, "Not all _this_ , you goof. You. You. I’m being what we call a mensch, here, and informing you that I think you’re worth all the shit I have to go through because of you and your messed-up family, even if it makes me so angry I can’t breathe with it sometimes."

"I don't—" Steve began, but Danny shushed him, pressed impossibly closer. 

"Okay, so maybe not worth all the vanishing-with-only-a-Dear-Danny-letter-for-company shit, because _communication, Steven._ But… you," he said again, and Danny was angry, and he was tired, and it always seemed to come back to the two of them like this in the end—and Danny, Danny wasn’t leaving.


End file.
